According to The Australian Financial Review yesterday, Fairfax has signed a new deal with Sensis (publisher of Yellow Pages and White Pages), which will see the classifieds section of Fairfax-owned papers around the country branded as Trading Post. In return, the ads will be given a listing on Trading Post website.

According to The Australian Financial Review yesterday, Fairfax has signed a new deal with Sensis (publisher of Yellow Pages and White Pages), which will see the classifieds section of Fairfax-owned papers around the country branded as Trading Post. In return, the ads will be given a listing on Trading Post website.

Our classies (Warrnambool Standard) have been converted to Trading Post.com.au, look bloody awefull and the layout is shocking.

As posted in The Spy Report, cricket writer Peter Roebuck has died suddenly in South Africa. He has been a contributor to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald for many years. His final article can be found here

Fairfax has appointed Paul Bailey as editor of The Australian Financial Review, and Sean Aylmer as national business editor of the metropolitan division, with responsibility for BusinessDay, Money and Investor products on print and digital platforms. Mark Baker, currently senior editor at The Age, has been promoted to the new position of national managing editor, metropolitan division.

Fairfax has announced a merger with Metro Media Publishing (MMP), which was founded by Antony Catalano and publishes The Weekly Review. It took large real estate advertising dollars away from Fairfax's Melbourne Weekly when it launched in 2010. Fairfax would pay $35 million and fold its Fairfax Community Newspapers in Victoria into MMP under the deal which still requires ACCC approval. After the deal is completed, Fairfax will own 50 per cent voting and economic interest in MMP.

Blogger and author Mia Freedman, who currently writes a column for the Sunday Life magazine (The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age), has joined News Limited, and will become a columnist for the Sunday Herald Sun, and be syndicated nationally. Her column starts January 29.http://www.perthnow....u-1226248699584

Fairfax has lost another senior journalist, with Neil Shoebridge resigning today after 9 years as the media and marketing editor of The Australian Financial Review. He has been appointed by Network Ten to the new position of Director of Corporate and Public Communications, according to The Australian.I enjoy reading Neil's articles and his insight in the media sector. The problem is there was virtually no one at the AFR sharing his workload and he had to write almost every article for the media section in Monday's paper. (In comparison, The Australian has half a dozen reporters for the media section) He will be a big loss to the AFR.

The only reason I can think of Gina Rinehart buying shares into Fairfax Media is to make its newspapers pro-Liberal like The Australian, and to silence other voices e.g. those supporting conservation and environment protection.

The Canberra Times website will be receiving a makeover. It appears that, after an expansion in audience figures, the CT's website will become more like the SMH, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today websites.

The Canberra Times is about to unveil an exciting new online experience with a new-look website at canberratimes.com.au.Canberra’ s home for breaking news, canberratimes.com.au has doubled its online readership over the past year, and now averages more than half a million unique browsers a month and more than one million page views a week.The launch of the expanded website heralds a transformation in digital news delivery in Canberra.The new-look site offers a richer, more compelling and more entertaining Canberra Times experience, with more news, sport, information and opinion from the city, the region, the nation and the world.Drawing on the resources of The Canberra Times newsroom and our bureaus in Federal Parliament, the ACT Legislative Assembly and the ACT courts, canberratimes.com.au will continue to deliver breaking local news across the day.It also taps into Fairfax Media’s national news network, including smh.com.au and theage.com.au.

Fairfax Media has reported a first-half net profit of $96.7 million, down 44 per cent on a year earlier. First-half sales fell 5 per cent to $1.232 billion mainly due to weak advertising market in VIC and NSW. Digital operations increased revenue by 14 per cent from the same period in the previous year with total sales of $189.8 million.

The Australian says today that the board of Fairfax Media last week discussed the possibility of closing the printed weekday editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald: http://mumbrella.com...-editions-93957
I think for the Fairfax board to even considering not printing both papers on weekdays is ridiculous and show the dire situation the company is in. If the Herald Sun in Melbourne can still sell around 500,000 copies per weekday, then why can't The Age sell around 250,000-300,000 copies per weekday? I think Fairfax still doesn't get the message that both The Age and SMH are too serious and lack gossip (of the entertainment kind) and even their exclusives don't set the agenda like their rivals (Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph) do.

Johnson how about a bit of sympathy for the people who have lost their jobs, or are currently facing an uncertain future in their roles, like myself. We are being told change is coning, but it could be sometime in the next three years. How do you think that makes us all feel? it's a silly decision, yes but news limited are also about to cut 400 editorial jobs. No one, absolutely no one who works in the media is safe. So perhaps you should stop making silly comparisons on something you don't seem to know much about.

I do feel sorry for people who have lost (or are about to lose) their jobs. I am not really sure moving editorial operations offshore will actually reduce costs or make the regional papers work better and maintain their quality. I fear that dailies such as Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury or Warrnambool Standard will lose their regional flavour by centralising editorial operations in another country.

Totally agree with you, how is a sub-editor across the ocean supposed to pick up on local errors, historical references, and if they need to check something, international phone calls aren't cheap! I'm just a bit touchy over all the uncertainty. I found out about this via twitter, not the best way to find out your colleagues are about to loose their jobs. That's the problem, the uncertainty is the thing that is getting to us all, I've got a wife and two young kids to support, we are looking at buying a house, now I can't make those types of decisions because I don't know if I will have a job at the end of tomorrow, the end of next week or the end of the year. It's crippling morale in the newsrooms but the people in Sydney don't understand that, their million dollar jobs aren't at risk.